Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, I wish to address the Government’s amendment to Clause 1 and the amendment of noble Lord, Lord Randall. The Government have proposed replacing subsections (2) and (3) of Clause 1 with a single subsection. To understand the implications, one must look carefully at the deletions. Subsection (3), which the Government would delete, states that the sustainability objective is the prime fisheries objective. It is reasonable to infer that the removal of this is tantamount to its negation. If sustainability is not the prime objective of fish stock management, it is logical to infer that the depletion of fish stocks would be regarded as a tolerable outcome if their preservation would stand in the way of the realisation of more favoured objectives.
One does not have to look far to discover what these objectives might be. The Government have encouraged an expectation that Brexit will result in a bonanza for British fishermen. They are keen to avoid an immediate disappointment of this expectation by restraining the fishermen. Fish are not vital to the UK economy. The incentive to conserve them is liable to be overshadowed in the short run by the desire of the Government to appease UK fishermen and supporters of Brexit in general.
That this is the immediate objective is confirmed by another deletion from subsection 2(a)—the deletion to which the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Randall, draws attention. The original clause declared the intention to avoid compromising environmental sustainability either in the short term or in the long term. The Government now propose to do this only in the long term. This invites the danger that, in the long term, there would be little left to sustain. The noble Lord, Lord Randall, has proposed that the remaining qualification, which refers to the long run, should also be deleted, so that the objective of environmental sustainability can be asserted unequivocally. I believe this to be his intention and I support his Motion strongly.
Thankfully, there are other passages in the confused text of this Bill that might give us greater hope for the survivability of fish stocks than the Government’s proposed version of subsection (2) of Clause 1.  Clause 1(3)(b) asserts the objective of exploiting the marine stocks in such a way as to maintain the populations of harvested species above the biomass levels capable of producing the maximum sustainable yield. Notice that this is not an injunction to fish at the maximum sustainable yield—which would imperil the fish stocks—but to fish at a lesser rate, which would allow stocks to regenerate.
I am unaware of the problems of this clause. It must have been placed there by someone with a proper understanding of fish stock ecology. It makes good sense and I wish to commend it.

Lord Anderson of Ipswich: As a serving member of the Courts of Appeal of Guernsey and of Jersey, I do not normally speak on Channel Islands matters, at least if there were any possibility that it might disqualify me from sitting on some future appeal. This permissive extent clause, most unusually not consented to by either Guernsey or Jersey, merits a departure from that general rule.
There is no need to speculate as to why the Government insist so strongly at this time on a power to implement international fisheries agreements in the Channel Islands. The Minister has, after all, told the Constitution Committee that,
“we do not currently have any specific concerns which we would envisage using the PEC to address.”
I accept that formulation, while noting the care with which it is drafted. I shall, however, speak as someone with a little understanding of the legal systems of the Channel Islands on the constitutional consequences that are feared in the islands were this clause, said by the Minister to support the Crown dependencies, to be activated.
There was no hint in what we heard from the Minister that Orders in Council issued under the clause would be anything other than automatically binding in the Channel Islands. The point I want to get across is that under the laws of Jersey and Guernsey, it is at least doubtful that such a clause would even allow the United Kingdom Government to legislate in future for the bailiwicks without their consent. The States of Jersey Law 2005, like the Code of 1771 that preceded it, assumes that the UK Parliament may legislate for Jersey but places an important fetter on that power. Discussed by the Royal Court in the terrorist asset-freezing case of 2011, Section 31 of that law appears to signify that any Order in Council to extend the provisions of the Fisheries Bill to Jersey would need to be approved by Jersey’s legislature, the States Assembly, before it could be registered.
The States of Deliberation has a similar function in Guernsey under Article 72A of the Reform (Guernsey) Law 1948, as amended. Does the Minister accept that an Order in Council providing for the implementation of international obligations in the Channel Islands could take effect there only with the consent of the States Assembly and the States of Deliberation? If he cannot agree—I suspect that his instructions may be that he cannot—we enter into dangerous and heavily disputed waters.
The consent or otherwise of devolved Administrations within the United Kingdom is much in your Lordships’ minds at the moment, as we consider the internal market Bill. However, the constitutional issues for the Channel Islands are starker than that. Unlike Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, they are not part of the United Kingdom, not represented in this Parliament and benefit from no equivalent to the protection for devolved Administrations in Clauses 41 and 42. Were the legislators in Guernsey or Jersey to resolve that an Order in Council under this clause should not be approved, we would find ourselves in a constitutional impasse. The confusion and ill feeling that could be engendered in the fishing communities of the Channel Islands and of Normandy, uncertain of the rules to which they were subject, would benefit no one, save the lawyers who might be expected to rely not only on the points that I have outlined but on the right to electoral representation that the Gibraltarian Miss Matthews successfully asserted in her case against the United Kingdom. That was one of my many defeats in the European Court of Human Rights.
It is genuinely puzzling that there seems to be no compelling reason to have participated in such a potentially damaging conflict. For many years, as the Minister acknowledged, Guernsey and Jersey have found ways in which to scrupulously give effect to their international obligations while preserving their constitutional autonomy. By threatening that autonomy for no specific reason  this clause sows discord where there was, constitutionally if not always politically, harmony. I regret that we are asked to accept it and that the request has come so late in the parliamentary process. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beith, for his amendment, which has allowed these important issues at least to be aired.